The 22-year-old man accused of killing an eighth-grade girl in retaliation for his brother's death was found not guilty Tuesday night (Aug. 22) of nearly all the charges against him in the case, according to defense attorneys John Fuller and Gregory Carter.

An Orleans Parish jury found Eric "Teddy" Adams not guilty of second-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder in the slaying of Christine Marcelin, a 15-year-old student at KIPP Believe College Prep, on April 30, 2012.

The jury convicted Adams of obstruction of justice in connection with the investigation into Marcelin's murder. Adams is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 27 by Criminal District Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier and faces five to 40 years.

During Adams' weeklong trial, prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to prove to the jury that Adams had killed Marcelin in retaliation for her perceived involvement in the killing of his younger brother Brandon Adams near a Desire-area park three days earlier.

Orleans Parish prosecutors Alex Calenda and Irena Zajickova described Marcelin's slaying as "an execution." The girl was found face-down in a vacant lot in the 5000 block of Alcee Fortier Boulevard, having been shot 14 times with a .40-caliber handgun. Most of her wounds indicated her killer stood over her as she knelt, and kept shooting after she fell.

"The person that killed Christine had a personal vendetta against her," Zajickova told jurors. "That was Eric Adams, who felt she had set up his brother Brandon."

But the state's presentation was devoid of eyewitnesses, video surveillance or scientific evidence explicitly linking the defendant to the crime.

"There is zero evidence of Eric Adams anywhere near that area when this girl died. His blood's not on the scene. His footprints aren't on the scene. There's not even his tire tracks at the scene. There's no evidence of him on her anywhere," Fuller said during closing arguments Tuesday evening. "This boy not only didn't do it, but he didn't have anything to do with it."

Prosecutors did convince the jury that Adams impeded the investigation into Marcelin's death by failing to comply with two different search warrants seeking his white iPhone. He first gave detectives a different phone than the one being sought. After that led to his arrest on obstruction of justice allegations, he told police the phone they sought was hidden inside a basketball shoe in his closet.

When New Orleans police homicide detective Sgt. Wayne DeLarge returned to Adams' home with that information, he found all the shoes in Adams' closet to be empty. Neither the phone belonging to Adams nor the one belonging to the victim were ever recovered.

During the trial, the state offered tower-location data gleaned from the two unrecovered cellphones that appeared to show similar movements toward and away from the remote area of New Orleans East where the girl's body was found.

Prosecutors also presented a pair of witnesses who testified that Adams bragged about killing the girl while they were jailed together inside the former Orleans Parish Prison. One of the two received sentencing considerations in his own unrelated case in exchange for his testimony, which Carter said should make the testimony suspect.

Only the victim's cousin Crystal Scott testified that Marcelin told her she had accepted a ride home from Eric Adams on the night she disappeared, and Fuller insisted to jurors that Scott was lying.

"She's blinded by hurt and hate," Fuller said. "You can't be so blinded by hate and hurt that you're willing to send the wrong person to jail for the rest of his life. As much as we hurt for the Marcelin family and we want the true killers to go to jail, there is nothing to be gained by sending the wrong person to jail."

Staff reporter Ken Daley contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect sentencing range for a conviction of obstruction of justice in the investigation of a homicide. The correct range is five to 40 years, according to the Orleans Parish DA's Office.